Late last year, Maung Zarni, who currently works at the London School of Economics, took aim at Burma experts for what he perceives as their analytical failures. Events and commentary of recent months have only served, apparently, to fire him up even more.

His most recent contribution to The Irrawaddy doesn’t pull its punches. This time he devotes most of his energy to criticising Thant Myint-U and Marie Lall. He also points out the efforts of some “academic white-washers” to begin conversations with Qaddafi’s regime in Libya, and highlights supposed parallels among scholarly engagements with Burma.

Reading this piece I come away with the distinct impression that Zarni sees a conspiracy among a wide-range of academic, political and corporate interests. He is particularly keen to call out “quasi-autonomous” entities (both the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and Chatham House in London earn this reprimand), “the highly controversial Myanmar Egress” and anyone else “with well-known ties to Burma’s dictatorship”.

Zarni also promises that his blunt critique of the International Crisis Group’s latest report will be out soon. As a teaser, he judges that it is “at best intellectually incompetent and at worst empirically delusional”. Strong words. I expect many New Mandala readers are looking forward to the full version.

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Sadly, I’m not sure the full version will be worth my time. Of course, Zarni used to be one of those academics he now criticizes. Up until recently, he advocated reconciliation with the regime and a softening of sanctions. From what I heard, he went to Burma back in 2004 to try to negotiate with members of Khin Nyunt’s team. Many in the Burmese community now view his current caustic criticism of the regime as trying to make up for and gloss over this past.

It’s rather ironic that Zarni would condemn “organizations that prostitute themselves by spinning for their neo-liberal governmental patrons… in the West.” This is the exact same argument has been leveled against exiled groups opposing the junta (by Michael Aung-Thwin, for example). As far as I’ve seen it, the Western backed pro-democracy opposition has not been proposing anything radically different from neo-liberal government reforms (albeit under a system of electoral politics).

There are now a range of other strong views being expressed over at The Irrawaddy in response to the article. One commentator has taken the time to add further names to the list of “re-branders or junta apologists (sanctions lifters)”.

You can really feel the bitterness seeping out of your computer screen, it’s quite incredible. I can only assume it’s because Dr Zarni’s own attempt at engagement back in 2004 or whenever it was failed. There’s no shame in trying and failing but I think he does himself a disservice by writing with such bile, as it only detracts (and distracts) from whatever it is he’s trying to say. I look forward to seeing something a little more constructive from Dr Zarni in the future, once he gets over deconstructing the ICG report.

Dear Charles, I think there is a difference in Obama’s evolving policy and Maung Zarni’s changing stance; Obama is the decision-maker trying to get a solution with maximum benefits to the people of Burma while Maung Zarni is changing his positions to get favor from his benefactors, be they the West or the SPDC!

There is no need for a conspiracy, only like-minded people and a convergence in interests.

Zarni is an effective polemicist and Burmese activist, not a semi-detached ivory tower academic. He pulls no punches and the truth definitely hurts.

He has tried engagement with the junta and found it wanting from first hand experience. The man would himself be found wanting as an irredeemable appeaser if he had persisted along the same lines regardless. That’s the normal line of approach for states and their diplomats until all hell breaks loose once again when they’d resume wringing their collective hands and making appropriate condemnations for the umpteenth time.

Having lived and studied in the neo-liberal West doesn’t necessarily lead to a belief in the pervasive neo-liberal tenets, and it’s a credit to him that he doesn’t, but instead he’s managed to do more than scratch the shiny surface. Receiving some kind of institutional support is simply a means to an end. What matters is to what end he uses this support. His heart is true to his country, no axe to grind, no personal gain from business deals in the offing.

ah, the gainful stance for someone who doesn’t allow anything to shut his mouth would be to write normalizing pieces – or whitewash – an emerging military apartheid there.

it’s getting late in Burma – with the Chinese, the Indians, the Thais, the Malaysians, the N. and S. Koreans all raking in big time – and western interests, save a few oil giants which are not brand-sensitive, are getting nervous about going home empty handed.

then the regime decides to cross-dress and western interests look at the bell with self-intoxicating commercial lust.

that’s really the crux of the emerging Burma narrative – the rest is icing.

Imagine JEdgar Hoover, appeared cross-dressed in a pub near the FBI building in DC, and all the post-teenage boys, started whispering the not-too-bad idea of the cross-dressed, cross-legged Hoover up for the night.

that doesn’t change the true sex – nature – of Hoover. but the dress was to be the lure. so, let’s focus on the dress and not look at the hairy legs, muscular arms, etc in the interest of a quick tango.

and someone like me who has seen the beast close-up and says it’s Hoover with the male organ screams warnings.

then the morons start saying that i change my narrative.

ask John Maynard Keynes what he would have done each time his theory is contradicted by emerging realities or “data”.

as with my Myanmar passport re-issued go and ask NLD Vice Chair U Tin Oo who was issued a passport to go to Singapore for medical treatment, or the NLD Youth traveling in the neighborhood what deals they have made with the regime.

Anyone can change their opinion as many times as they wish, they may change their ideology, their religion, their clothes, their shoes, where they live, their spouses etc etc.
The way they blow their noses.

It’s their lives, No??

Being stuck is known as being dogmatic, “textual” “fundamentalist” didn’t you all know?

At least Zarni has the courage to confront reality and to write about it.

Criticizing is allowed in a free society as long as it’s all true. In fact, it’s a good thing.

In politics especially in the fighting for a cause one needs conviction. A chameleon is not a true activist. I don’t think D Zarni can compare him with the NLD leader General Tin Oo. He does not have the latter’s conviction, tenacity and courage!

Maung Maung
Well said, but they have to live and eat. You know there are many people like Daw Mya Mya Win and Dr Win Naing of Japan who opposed the SLORC/SPDC vehemently at first, but then they changed their stance and become cozy with the junta. It’s human or rather natural as they are not committed to the cause since the very beginning.

Mg Mg, Did Aung San not have the conviction in fighting for the cause of Burma’s liberation when he made a U-turn, first admiring the Japanese militarists and bringing home his Fascist “gods” – as Thakhin Kodaw Hmaing put it to him – and then going back to the irredeemably colonial Britain?

Aung San himself wrote pointedly changing one’s position, view, etc is not simply a sign of wishy-washyness as a person grows up – and finds things which he has long held to be true to be less true or less convincing. A conviction is never a fixed, purist “thing” “existential experience”. It can manifest itself in different outwardly acts.

It looks like Mg Mg has nothing intellectual substantive to say rather than calling others ‘chameleon’ who dare to act on their initiatives, however unpopular and, to think out of the box and to challenge any orthodoxy. Sounds like he is wearing his Japanese occupation-era “pair of green glasses” of “conviction” in judging others independent ideas, initiatives and acts.

On courage, I will not say anything. Try jumping straight into the “tiger’s mouth” as it were after so many years of trying to do everything humanly possible to weaken the regime.

Chameleons don’t get entrusted with a mission like looking for “arms and other types of concrete support” by no other than the KNU leaders and NCUB heads Bo Mya and Man Sher. There are still those who are alive who can verify this.

Still I have the guts to do what I think was right. What was right 10 years ago may not necessarily be right now. If you are Burmese or other natives of Burma, and I think you are, do you still hold on to the popularly and strongly held belief (a conviction) – that women are inferior in intellect, character and essence – because Law-ka-niti says so?

Courage is not something that people were born with or exists inside people like salt or sugar in a small bowl which one accesses with a spoon. It is one’s actions which bear signs of courage.

Courage is to act on one’s clear conscience even in the face of verbal abuse, baseless attacks and mindless opposition from pathetically self-righteous, evidently closed- and narrow-minded morons like Mg Mg and Min Aung Naing. I don’t even know your true identities or what you have done to promote “the cause”, but I can confidently say your records of initiatives and impact will come nowhere near mine.

Why don’t you grow up and do something meaningful with your life other than finger-point at others who have been trying to use his privileged positions and talents for change in Burma, whatever his strategies or tactics may be.

Do I need moral approvals for guys like you who don’t even have balls to write in your own true identities, talking about courage?

On the need to eat ask ex-Major Aung Lynn Htut in Washington who was ONE of my regime contacts whether he thought then and he thinks now that I showed any signs of cooptability or corruptibility.

Why don’t you look into the mirror and search your soul and see if you have done anything with your life?

Don’t show your fist while hiding your face in your skirt. Come out and challenge me openly, but do declare who you really are and what you have done and why you think you have the moral authority to pass judgment on others.

The Chinese “communist” party buys people like you to sow confusions in Chinese chat rooms. Maybe there is a job for you there, if you can handle Mandarin.

Dr Zarni,
You have the knee jerk mentality of a fighter (Boxer) that challenges the audience. There is no need to personally challenge the public as I’m part of the public or the people and I have free right to criticize you or any body claiming to be fighting for the liberation of Burma or for democracy in Burma!
What happen to your Free Burma Coalition?
What is the result of your association with the KNU/Bo Mya ?
What is the result of your tete a tete with the erstwhile Prime minister MI General Khin Nyunt?
And you lectured the people’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD on sanctions!
You have Napoleonic mentality in you to be a hero, but it’s bad that your abilities do not match his!
Please be a true son of the country, Burma, a hero for the good cause, but not for yourself! Discard the Mike Tyson’s mentality!

You gentiles all have lovely handbags. I believe an appropriate awkward silence is in order to take the sting out of both sides’ vindictive temerity. If this were in a tea shop, I am sure Dr Zarni wouldn’t want to submit to these random and anonymous doubters by giving away so much of himself. He would probably end up throwing piping hot tea all over them. And I am sure the doubters would not want to bring Dr Zarni to such an extreme. The point is none of us are at that tea spot because of, among other reasons, Burma’s governance issues. How one argues for change in Burma should not deviate from the fact that we’re all on the same page of wanting political change in Burma. Let’s not forget that. I hope this is not taken as a whitewash of the issues, but more a pause for steam release.

Only anyone that promote and effect the well being of the citizenry immediately.

Now you see why Than Shwe is not regarded as the bad guy within Myanmar compared to everyone else here @ New Mandala or anywhere else ,arm chair or otherwise supporting a future with nothing beneficial presently.

Is Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD above criticism? If you think they are I have nothing more to say in response.

Only a year ago I wrote that the NLD should come out clean on sanctions ON IRRAWADDY site. I wrote scathing pieces about the opposition and its failings.

Its the opposition at large – and dissidents — above criticism? Does the Dalai Lama escape criticism? should he escape criticism because of his moral stature?

Not even the Buddha – if you are Buddhist – was above criticism in his human life time. Forget the rest.

What is the tangible result of the efforts of ANYONE who is trying to change Burma – through armed resistance, through international lobby, through political defiance, through non-violence, through UN special envoys, through resolutions, through capacity building projects, through non-violence, through calls for dialogue, through ‘working within the system’, through exposing the generals to the outside world, and the list goes on.

And above all, what is the result of your leaving rubbish comments on others’ transparently presented arguments? Why can’t you respond what I write intelligently, rather than engage in below-the-belt rubbish.

No “commenter” is outside his or her comment (about ourselves and others and any subject of our interest). No writer about human affairs can be outside of their stories.

Do you think Maj Sai Thein Win would have been able to make a splash with his information about the regime’s weapons’ programs, if he didn’t come out blowing the whistle under his real identity?

Agreement and disagreement are as natural as different sizes of even on own fingers. That’s not the issue here.

The issue is having no balls to openly declare one’s own identity and background – which will reveal relevant information about a comment left without any informational transparency.

To me that is a mark of cowardice, dishonesty and act of concealment based in insecurities about oneself which one doesn’t want the public or the readership to know.

Much of what has been commented here is not about a serious discussion, not even by a long stretch of imagination, and doesn’t in any way enlighten or educate the readership.

Why the ICG’s Burma analyses and calls for ending sanctions cannot be taken seriously
By Maung Zarni
Published on April 11, 2011

When the European Union policy makers meet to review the EU Common Policy on Burma, they would be wise to treat the International Crisis Group’s (ICG) latest report on Burma titled ‘Myanmar’s Post-election Landscape’ with a huge grain of salt and disregard its call, in effect, for the unconditional embrace of the country’s military dictatorship by lifting sanctions, normalizing aid relations and promoting trade and investment.

Why can’t you guys do something for the betterment of our country rather than attacking Dr. Zarni like a child?
Look at which direction our country is going, the ruling military is incapable of running the country and thinking nothing but war and upgrading weapons. On the other hand, the opposition is just too morals in their ideology to lead our country forward.

With the ways things are going, I am very pessimistic for the future our country. I think assassinating Daw Suu is a very attractive option for the military led gov right now, they can certainly do a lot of things they want to do without her. Wouldn’t you be thinking the same thing if you were Than Shwe? But by assassinating her, the country can descent into chaos, much more restrictive economic sanctions will be imposed by the west and Burma or Myanmar (whatever you want to call) will turn to China for help as usual. Economically and politically, our country could become part of China.

I only hope she is planning and preparing adequately while there still is an opportunity before the eventual and inevitable crackdown. No point at all in confining oneself to merely gesture politics, publicity and point scoring in a place like Burma.

Brings to mind Margaret Thatcher’s famous words “The lady is not for turning“. It’s so much easier to defy the world when you are in power.

We have witnessed that kind of defiance with the military regime that has just undergone a makeover but who are they kidding? A new leaf? A fig leaf so far as we can see.

An about face on a liberal’s total commitment to non-violence is long overdue. Her father never had any misgivings on that score. And she won’t be making a U turn in her most important commitment – fighting to win the ‘second struggle for independence’. “The Lady is not for turning“.